My favourite NLP books of all time

I am often asked to recommend books on NLP.
Obviously, this would depend your current level of knowledge and your focus (therapy, business, general communication, etc).

So, I will add a few book recommendations here and will start with my current favourite.

Drumroll, please:

Magic in Practice by Garner Thomson and Khalid Khan.

The full title is

Magic in Practice: Introducing Medical NLP: The Art and Science of Language in Healing and Health

Quite a mouthful, but it is an excellent resource for the advanced NLP Practitioner. While focusing on health and healing, you could use it just as well for business or other areas of NLP, as it is written so well and uses so many fantastic examples.

I met Garner a few times, but have no idea who Khalid Khan is, so hopefully will meet him in future.

Anyway, highest possible recommendation.

Here are a few other books I have recommended over the last few weeks:

The Essential NLP Practitioner's Handbook

NLP - The New Technology of Achievement

Introducing NLP Neuro-Linguistic Programming

The NLP Pocketbook

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Rodger Bailey

If you are familiar with NLP Meta Programs, you should be familiar with the name Rodger Bailey. While Leslie Cameron-Bandler was the first one to identify many of the different filters or mental programs, Rodger Bailey (to my knowledge) was the one to combine them and the first one to construct questions that helped assess certain Meta Programs without having to observe people's behaviours. He called this the Language and Behavior Profile, or LAB Profile for short.

One of his students, the lovely Shelle Rose Charvet, translated the questions into French and later wrote the best book on Meta Programs, "Words that Change Minds". Shelle Rose Charvet became authorized by Rodger Bailey to run the official LAB Profile training courses, which she has been delivering worldwide since 1995. Rodger then focused on working with elite athletes and with schools, using his knowledge of how the brain operates.

Now in his 70s, Rodger continued to develop the LAB Profile and has just started an online certification course he calls the LAB Profile 2.0.

From what I have seen so far, I really like the style of teaching and the depth of knowledge imparted throughout this course. He distinguishes 17 different patterns (as opposed to the 14 in "Words that Change Minds") and they are all incredibly useful in different areas of life.

I will add more feedback when I have gone through the course.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Nick Kemp

I realise that Nick Kemp is not very well known, but StanNLP65 asked me to write about him and since I've met Nick several times while assisting on Bandler's training in London, I'm happy to give some feedback.

Nick is an NLP Trainer based in the North of England (Leeds or Manchester, not quite sure) and the only reason I know him is because both of us were assisting on the Bandler/McKenna-Breen courses in London. The last time I met him was during one of Derren Brown's TV specials where all sorts of NLP people were invited to come to London. Since then, we only had a few exchanges in online groups.

He has very good rapport skills and seems to be very good at PR, meaning he is good at getting people to think that he is an excellent trainer. According to StanNLP65 "Nick's Master Prac was mostly about Nick and what a great trainer he is. Training was okay, though!"

So, it seems that as a trainer he is certainly not one of the best, but probably not one of the worst.

He used to have a business partnership with Tina Taylor, an NLP "Master" Trainer, who is nice enough, but quite a lightweight when it comes to NLP training. She also was one of the perennial assistants at the McKenna-Breen courses in London. They had some kind of a bust-up, but I don't know any details.

Nick is also one of the few trainers (that I know of) who has been kicked out of the Society of NLP (SNLP), which should make him my hero (fight the machine!), but again, I don't know what really happened.

Nick is also very vocal on LinkedIn, where he has become a top contributor on several forums/groups by posting LOL and ME TOO in just about every thread, which I find highly annoying.

One thing that he deserves a lot of credit for, though, is his re-discovery of Frank Farelly, creator of Provocative Therapy and one of the forgotten (or at least rarely mentioned) therapists who were modeled by Bandler and Grinder when they started the whole NLP thing. Provocative therapy, if done by a master, is a wonder to behold, so kudos to Nick for introducing Frank to a wider audience.

Reviewing the NLP Assistants in London

After I had asked in an earlier post which NLP trainers you would like to hear about, I received several emails from people who wanted me to comment on certain assistants on Richard Bandler's and Paul McKenna's NLP courses in London.

They asked about

- the psychic vampire who everybody tried to avoid

- the top assistant who was thought to be so good at getting people into trance because his breath could stun a rhino

- the NLP Master Trainer who got her certificate because she sucked up to Richard

- Richard Bandler's "Apprentices" who ranged from highly impressive and skilled to total morons

I thought about commenting on those people, but really, none of them are household names in the field of NLP (maybe the "Master Trainer"), so any comments from me would just be mean and nasty and I would hope that I've got most of the nastiness out of my system.

I might actually mention one of them, but need to do a bit of research, so no names at this point:

As far as I know, Rhinobreath actually took somebody's gig to run an NLP course abroad, because he was not bothered about certain ethics, whereas the trainer who was first invited to run the course, was.

If I got the story right, then the foreign promoter wanted the original trainer to cut some corners, which he declined to do.

So the promoter kicked him out, and all of a sudden, Rhinobreath was announced as doing the course, and if my information is correct, ran at least 2 of those courses and finally stopped being invited back after he tried to push his "own" courses, which apparently were not very well received.

For now, I will focus on the more well-known NLP Trainers and the next one coming up will be Wyatt Woodsmall.

Reviewing the NLP Trainers: Joseph Riggio

Maybe you also agree with the statement that it is okay to be the smartest person in the room, but that it is not okay to let everybody know it.

Whenever Joseph is in the room, it is pretty obvious that he is the smartest person in it (even if I am in the same room....).

And that is the main problem I have with him: he comes across as an incredibly arrogant asshole.

But that is actually the only issue I have with him, and, honestly, this might be more of a problem with my own self-esteem than him being overbearingly confident.

He is a treasure trove of knowledge, his speech at the ANLP conference in 2007 (I think) was one of the best speeches I have ever heard. He was mixing NLP, Spiral Dynamics, and Mythology into a work of genius. I think this is what he calls the Mythoself Process, but I actually have no clue what it is about, because whenever I ask people who attended his seminars on it, they get a tranced-out look on their faces and say that it was fantastic, but they can't explain why.

No matter, Joseph is an exceptionally skilled hypnotist, NLP trainer, speaker, and coach.

Very highly recommended!